"Brother Wilson's father and mother was Georgia people, and I
ricollect one of his brothers comin' through here with all his slaves
on his way to Mizzourah to set 'em free. The family moved from Georgia
to Tennessee because there was better schools there, and they wanted
to educate their children. They was the sort o' people that thought
more of books and learnin' than they did of money. But before Brother
Wilson got his schoolin', he took a notion he'd go into the army, and
when he wasn't but sixteen or seventeen years old, he was fightin'
under Gen. Andrew Jackson, and went through two campaigns. Then he
come home and went to college, and the next thing he was preachin' the
gospel.

"It's sort o' curious to think of a man bein' a soldier and a
preacher, too. But then, you know, the Bible talks about Christians
jest like they was soldiers, and the Christian's life jest like it was
a warfare. The Apostle tells us to put on the whole armor of God, and
when he was ready to depart he said, 'I have fought a good fight.' And
I used to think that maybe Brother Wilson wouldn't 'a' been as good a
preacher as he was if he hadn't first been a good soldier. He used to
say, 'I come of fighting stock and preaching stock, and the fighting
blood in me had to have its day.' The preachin' blood didn't seem to
come out in Martin Luther and John Calvin, but the fightin' blood was
there mighty strong. Folks used to say that one or the other of 'em
had a fight every day in the week, and if they couldn't git up a fight
with some other boy, they'd fight with each other. The druggist said
that after Brother Wilson come, he sold as much court-plaster and
arnica in a month as he used to sell in six months, and Mis' Zerilda
Moore used to declare she never had seen Martin Luther but once when
his eyes and nose was the natural shape and color. Some of the
church-members was scandalized at havin' their preacher's sons set
such a bad example to the rest o' the town boys, and they went to
Brother Wilson to talk to him about it. But he jest laughed and says
he, 'There's no commandment that says, "Thou shalt not fight," and I
can't whip my boys for having the spirit of their forefathers on both
sides of the house.' Says he, 'Their great-grandfather on their
mother's side was a fighting parson in Revolutionary times. He was in
his pulpit one Sunday morning when news was brought that the British
were coming, and he stepped down out of his pulpit and orga